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Subject: Re: Algorithms vs. knowledge - What to do next?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 10:59:46 06/04/02

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On June 04, 2002 at 10:49:00, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On June 04, 2002 at 08:54:57, José Carlos wrote:
>
>What i read in Dann's words is he is more believing in search
>rather than the knowledge. If that's the case then i think he is
>wrong.

Chess Tiger shows that search *IS* knowledge.  However, it is a different kind
of knowledge.

There will always be ways to improve the search.  There will always be ways to
improve the eval.  Both ways are paths to a better program.  To give up one
either path forever means that your program is not as good as it could be.

Optimze the path.  Optimize the eval.  Optimize the path.  Optimize the eval.

Maybe you are better at optimization of the evaluation function.  Quite frankly,
most programmers do not have your chess knowledge.  If anything, they should
spend more energy in the search.  After all, how can they inject a 2500 ELO
evaluation into their program if they cannot play at 2500?  On the other hand,
writing a better algorithm has a lot of possibilities.  So even someone who is
not a chess genius can do that.

Of course, the chess knowledge can be gleaned from somewhere else (chess books,
friends who are GM's -- whatever).

My point is that to stop development in any dimention is a mistake.  There will
always be room for improvement until the program is perfect.  Since it will
never be perfect, we won't run out of things to do.

[snip]



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